Universities: Just another business or there to serve the common good?: Newcastle University

How can we make a world better? What collective tools do we have? One of the essential tools must be higher education. Yet the contribution of UK universities to the common good is patchy: better at allocating people to unequal destinations than creating equal opportunity, better at building their own prestige than bringing knowledge to all. Is this inevitable? Reflecting on British policy and international examples, this lecture explores the present limits and future possibilities of universities for the local, regional, national and global common good.

Simon Marginson is Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, and Joint Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education and a leading scholar in global and international higher education. His work spans global, international and comparative higher education, global science, higher education in East Asia, and the contributions of higher education to the common good. He has authored or edited 35 books on higher education, and his research is widely published and cited in the field.